Letters to My Sons: The Modern Galileo Galilei
“Men are like wine flasks, …bottles with the handsome labels. When you taste them, they are full of air or perfume or rouge. These are bottles fit only to pee into!” Galileo Galilei
My favorite prophet of the Scriptures, when speaking of “telescopic vision”, would have to be Isaiah. And by that I mean one whom God has placed a prophetic “scope” to peer broad and deep into God’s upper world, only to conclude something unbelievable! He saw a broken man, a rejected man who was seated in the Heavens! In the early stages of Isaiah’s book, he records that he sees a throne… located far away, in a remote corner of the Heavens. But by the end of his writing, he concludes “heaven is your throne!” That “chair” in the corner was now filling and fulfilling his view. It seems that the “chair” had enlarged… “of the increase of His government… there shall be no end.” But I suspect that there was something else taking place.
From personal experience, I believe that Isaiah was graced with a telescope… that he first used as a microscope. Easy to do if you first pick up the wrong end and take a peek! As with all things new from God… there is a learning curve he graciously allows. Isaiah started looking into the nation, proclaiming the “microscopic mess” he saw. But God never intends for the “mess”, after being revealed, to remain the focus of the prophet. There must be the long range cure… looking through the prophetic telescope properly… clearly. This change takes place around Chapter 40. So dramatic is this new perspective, so acute, that many scholars have written that it was a different man writing to the end of the book. It was not a different man on the outside, just one from the inside. It was a prophet who finally learned to handle his gift properly… holding it in the merciful direction and orientation in which the gift was given. I know from personal experience.
Can we mishandle our gifting? Of course! It is good to remind myself that the “gifts” of the Spirit are really not gifts (like Christmas presents) but are indeed the “manifestations” of the Spirit. “Gifts” carry a man-centered “for me” understanding… while “manifestations” focuses on the desires of the Spirit. Do you see how easy it is to mishandle even one word? But there is good news…
Isaiah never gave up! He kept practicing with his telescope… he exercised by his daily raising the scope from his heart to his eye… from his eye to his heart… over and over and over and over again and again and again. Our heart has to see, too! The shortest and broadest distance in the universe is the distance from our head to our heart. The daily exercise of the prophetic is to see afar the things that God has on the horizon… only to lower the scope, hoping to behold the freedom of the glory with our own eye. (the word “Behold!” in it’s truest sense!) It is safe to say that what you are looking at is new! Never been held… never before beheld… and confusing… very confusing.
Such is the case for Isaiah’s view recorded in chapters 52 & 53. Our generational view of the prophetic has been for the most part “man centered”, but God knows this and is cheering us on to “hold these things precious”. Keep using the prophetic… the tool that must be practiced faithfully. The end result is the same… a throne that fills the heavens. What I behold afar always includes the cross. It did for Isaiah, too. He saw the one and only man for whom was written… “for the JOY set afar, He endured the cross.”
*This is a re-write of an open visitation I had on behalf of a dear friend of mine*
Lovedmadlydeeplymuchly…jt
